Water ways: Nick Thorpe: Hitching with the holy order

Fourteen men on their way to Iona in a curragh made from canvas and wood find that heaven can test the patience of seafaring saints

It’s 5pm on a breezy afternoon in the Firth of Lorne and I’m halfway to Iona in a canvas boat stuffed with monks. “Lord, we’ve come a long way and we’re feeling scunnered,” intones Jim the bosun, praying aloud on behalf of 13 brethren hunched over their oars. “It would sure be nice to have an east wind instead of this westerly to help us know that you’re with us . . .”

If you had told me three months ago that I’d be hitching a ride from the holy orders I’d have assumed you were pulling my cassock. But Scottish maritime and religious history is replete with seafaring saints, particularly in the Western Isles.

St Columba is the most famous, a warrior-monk who sailed from Ireland to Iona in 563 in an animal-skin boat as penance for his part in a bloody war, and ended up bringing Christianity to these shores.